Antifa “thugs” were “inspired” to target Owens and Charlie Kirk by a HuffPost article deriding the rwo as “racist,” Owens said in an Aug. 7 interview with Breitbart News’s Curt Schilling.

Candace Owens

Owens described politically motivated violence as a mostly left-wing phenomenon: “The liberal people are the violent people in this country. The Democrat Party are the violent people. They are the evil party, and they proved that yesterday.”

Owens said Antifa is a “well-funded” operation linked to Democrats: “What’s really scary to note is how quickly [Antifa] managed to assemble. That was within 20 minutes; that that many of them were outside. This is a well-funded effort.”

Turning Point USA founder Kirk and Owens, its communications director, were confronted by Antifa outside a Philadelphia restaurant on Aug. 6.

In video footage posted on Owens’ Twitter page, the Antifa group can be seen shouting and blowing whistles in the conservative commentators’ faces while chanting “F— white supremacy.”

Owens noted Democratic politicians’ silence over Antifa’s targeted harassment of herself and other conservatives, describing it as tacit support.

Owens stated, “Not a single Democrat politician has spoken out and condemned this. You know why? Because they’re part of the party that funds this. They can’t come out and condemn this, because it’s exactly what they want.”

Antifa “hyperlinked to a Huffington Post article. We say it all the time, the leftist media is inciting violence and hate by calling everybody a racist and a white supremacist,” Owens said. “They linked to a Huffington Post article which said that Turning Point USA had among its ranks a woman who tweeted something that was controversial and racist, and therefore gave Huffington Post the power to call our entire organization racist. That is what inspired the attack.”

Owens continued: “The Huffington Post inspired the attack against Charlie Kirk and I yesterday in the restaurant. The leftist media does not understand that when you smear people — when you call them Nazis, when you call them Nazi-defenders, when you call them white supremacists — you are giving permission to the people that are closest to Nazis in America — these brown shirts, these Antifa gangs and thugs — to come out and attack people. … The Huffington Post has told them that they are virtuous in their actions.”

Owens added: “This was 8 in the morning when the café opened. How did that many people, if they had jobs, suddenly leave their jobs, and get half-naked in black gear with black handkerchiefs around their face and show up at that cafe? You want to know what happened? It is their job. They’re paid to promote hate. They know exactly what to do. They got really close to my face, and they were screaming out of that megaphone. … They were within inches of my ear screaming and whistling.”